


Moonlight

by nightsstarr



Series: Lupine Moon [1]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, F/M, Fantastical Felannie Week, Sort Of, this is very early 2010s YA novel vibes and i'm sorry but i'm also not
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-11
Updated: 2020-04-11
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:09:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23600605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightsstarr/pseuds/nightsstarr
Summary: “Well, Annette Fantine,” he said, and his sharp eyes flicked down to his brilliantly reflective sword, and he wiped the wolf’s blood from it on the sleeve of his dark furred jacket, identical to the priest’s, then sheathed it with a calm expression. “You’ve landed yourself in quite a bit of trouble.”She frowned at him. “My wounds are nothing my own healers cannot address.”He smiled at her, but there was no mirth there. “I’m not speaking of your wounds.”Or, Annette sustains some injuries after fighting a Giant Wolf. She's whisked away from her home to be closely watched until the next full moon under the guise of a children's story. She's not happy about any of this.
Relationships: Annette Fantine Dominic/Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Series: Lupine Moon [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1708300
Comments: 12
Kudos: 65
Collections: FantasyFelannieWeek2020





	Moonlight

**Author's Note:**

> I'm too week for these fantasy prompts. Remember how everybody hated tropes like werewolves and stupid dramatic romances in the early 2010s? I loved that stuff.

○○○○○○○

**Full Moon - Red Wolf Moon**

“Annette” Gustave Dominic said, his voice tense as he called her. “Red wolves have been spotted at the far forest. They’re terrorizing the north village.”

A common occurrence during Red Wolf Moon, Annette wasn’t surprised to learn this. As the nobles residing over the land, the Baron and his gifted daughter were tasked with the safety of the people. Of course, support came to them in the form of troops from House Bladdyd, if needed, but the Dominic territories were so far west that they were often left to fend for themselves. 

Annette changed quickly into riding gear and plucked her magical hammer from where it rested with her supplies. She took a squadron of mages and they headed out.

Dominic lands were located in the south of Faerghus, near the coast. Even so, the wind had grown nippy, and Annette felt her cheeks pinch and turn red in the cold as they rode north. They arrived at the village just after midnight, lit by the full moon overhead. 

A pack of the wolves, agitated by the passage of time and the urgency of approaching winter, had made it into the village and attacked the shepherd’s flock. The village people cornered the wolves with great difficulty, and the shepherd’s first son lay in the frozen grass, blood pooled around his body. 

Annette ordered the people away, and her red velvet riding cloak reflected the moon as it shone down on them, the lone bright spot in the dark Faerghus sky. She dismounted from her favorite pinto horse and began to close in on the pack, her squadron of magic users flanking her. 

The wolves curled their mouths at them, revealing horrible fangs and eyes that flashed in the moonlight. She released a powerful burst of wind magic, and the wolves growled as they angled their bodies between the mages and the sheep.

The largest of the wolves snarled at them from the rear of the pack, protecting their kills and what few living sheep remained. The mages had a difficult time, but one by one the wolves fell. Fighting wolf packs required teamwork and leadership, and Annette spent as much time shouting commands as she did throwing bursts of wind and ducking beneath a powerful clawed paw or jumping away from long fangs. 

There were only three wolves left when the thunderous sound of hooves on a dirt path made her tense up, and she wiped sweat from her face as the alpha wolf paced murderously, calculating. It’s fur bristled all over, and its mouth was stained red with fresh sheep’s blood--and probably the blood of the shepherd’s son. 

The alpha launched itself at her as the second and third wolves leaped just behind her, and Annette realized the cursed animals separated her from her troops. 

The forest was behind her, and if she could escape onto one of the trees she could probably climb it and still manage to kill the alpha without having to worry too much about its claws. She shivered as a chilly breeze kicked up some loose dead leaves from the forest floor, and as she watched the wolf’s ears twitched back to the sound of the rustling leaves. 

It was as good a time as any for Annette to try to escape, so through the last Excalibur her magic could sustain at it and she sprinted.

She wasn’t fast enough. Annette was good at many things--studying, baking, playing the flute and performing Faerghus’s traditional dances, axefaire--but not running. She could have reached the thin twigs of low-hanging branches of the trees at the border of the forest when the wolf caught up to her, its teeth sinking into her shoulder, its claws pinning her down at her back. 

Her world shortened to the burst of pain, searing from her shoulder to her chest, and again the ribbons of flesh torn up in her back as the wolf crushed air from her lungs.

“Miss Dominic!” one of her mages shouted, although Annette had read that auditory hallucinations were possible amongst those who were dying--

But suddenly her lungs could expand again, and the distinctive  _ shing  _ of steel filled her ears. 

A sword…? 

Annette forced herself to push herself onto her elbows and look behind her. 

Some young man she’d never seen before was fighting the alpha wolf now, his sword gleaming in the stark moonlight. A shield glowed at his arm, and she recognized it as a brethren to her magic hammer. 

The deep sting of her shoulder prevented her from helping him, or even continuing to watch. Her hands shook as she dimly tried to rummage through her bag for a concoction.

“Wait, Miss,” a nearby voice said, and she saw black spots in her eyes as she threw up a sigil between them. A threat. 

“I mean no harm, Miss.” It was a healer, a priest or a monk. Dressed in a long black coat, with an off-white fur lining.

“Who are you?” she demanded, and she forced herself to sit up despite the blood pouring from the wound in her shoulder. 

“We’re part of the King’s court.”

She frowned, growing suspicious and frightened. “So far west?”

“Yes, Miss. I can explain, but you’ve got a very serious wound, there.” 

“Wait, don’t touch me--” Annette said, and she pushed back his arm as he reached for her. 

The young man had baited the red wolf into biting down on his shield, and as it did he lunged forward with his sword. Blood spattered over his jacket and his face, although he seemed unbothered by this.

“Miss,” the healer said, exasperated. 

“What’s the problem?” the swordsman asked easily, and he was looking down at Annette like she was his next big problem. She glanced at the body of the Red Wolf and back to the navy-haired soldier approaching her. He’d certainly had an easy enough time killing it, although Annette was sure she’d done most of the work before he showed up.

“She’s refusing to be healed, sir,” the priest answered, softly and with a deference that made Annette suspect that he was the leader of this group of soldiers.

“These are Dominic lands,” she said, with as much of an air of authority as she could muster. 

His eyes were a curious amber color, picking up the whitest light of the moon and throwing it back. He looked down at her with a look of disdain. “Yes, so it happens,” he answered sarcastically. 

She bristled at that. “I am Annette Fantine.  _ Of  _ Dominic.”

The swordsman didn’t seem the least bit impressed or even respectful. “Well, Annette Fantine,” he said, and his sharp eyes flicked down to his brilliantly reflective sword, and he wiped the wolf’s blood from it on the sleeve of his dark furred jacket, identical to the priest’s, then sheathed it with a calm expression. “You’ve landed yourself in quite a bit of trouble.”

She frowned at him. “My wounds are nothing my own healers cannot address.”

He smiled at her, but there was no mirth there. “I’m not speaking of your wounds.”

For some reason, his icy expression spooked her, not to mention the fact that he’d shown up with a mysterious battalion of Kingdom soldiers, all dressed in dark clothes and furs and heavy boots. 

“Can you stand, Miss Dominic?”

“Sir,” the healer said softly. “Her wounds are really quite severe.”

The swordsman shrugged. “If she doesn’t want to be healed then surely the lady must be able to stand on her own two feet.”

It was a challenge, and a command, and a sarcastic remark. Annette hated him. 

Thankfully the wolf had rent into her so deeply that the pain was mostly numb, so far into her body that she couldn’t feel it. This was obviously not good, but she was glad of it for this spiteful moment.

Biting her lip to keep from grunting, she forced herself to stand, and her eyes watered at the stinging pain in her shoulder, the way the wound in her back pulled as she straightened up. Her shoulder was soaked in blood through to her cloak, and her back was equally wet and sticky, but she couldn’t feel anything but pleased at the way his amber eyes narrowed and shifted over her, analyzing. 

“Are you always so rude, sir?” she asked brightly. “I’ve introduced myself, and yet I’ve still no idea who  _ you  _ are.”

“Felix Fraldarius,” he answered swiftly, and he swept an arm in front of his chest as he bowed to her in a great show of formality that she knew was ingenuine. 

“Oh,” Annette said, and her face flooded with heat and she knew she was blushing. He  _ far _ outranked her in the ladder of Faerghus’s nobility, and she’d just been so rude. 

As her face heated up, her limbs became heavy, and then numb, and the numbness followed her blood up and to her head and she was falling back, and Felix was stepping forward to catch her.

○○○○○○○

The first thing she took in when she woke was the whine of wheels on a rugged path. She was jostled, not roughly, but enough to jolt her into wakefulness.

She was in some cart, and pushed to the sides to give her space to lay down were supply crates. It was dim in the cart, but it was probably daytime. She seemed to be alone. Her cloak was gone, and her shoulder ached her but it was healed. It had been wrapped with a bandage, and she was wearing a mage’s dress, in that black and indigo that the soldiers from the previous night seemed to wear. 

Panic gripped her, and her heart leaped to her throat. This must mean…

She was kidnapped?

She scrambled to the front of the cart and pulled the flap open just enough for her to see through. Trailing along the back of the cart were several mounted units, not an entire army but certainly more than Annette could fight her way through. She was panicking, and her breaths were coming shallow and rapid. It was enough to make her dizzy. She kneeled on the rough plank wood floor and offered a prayer to the Goddess, asking her for guidance and clarity and protection. She also asked her for strength.

She crawled over to the edge of the cart, and she lifted the vellum from the side. They were riding just to the west of the small mountain chain that ran through the country--perhaps if she was lucky, she could escape into a clever cave set into the side of the mountains and figure out a way back to Dominic. 

It wasn’t a great plan, but every moment longer that Annette delayed, she got farther and farther away from her home. 

She stuck her hands through the vullum at the entrance flap and she blasted an Excalibur at the spot where she knew the mounted knights would still be. A horse whinnied furiously and there was shouting and commotion. Without looking, she blindly leaped through the vellum. 

One of the horses had been knocked over, a soldier pinned beneath its body. The other knight had dismounted and leaped off to help. Annette bolted toward the mountains. 

An archer spotted her and loosed an arrow at her, but he wasn’t aiming for lethal areas and ut was easy to dodge.. 

“Dammit,” she heard a voice shout from behind her. “Sir! The target!”

Since when was Annette a _ target? _

Her original plan wasn’t actually that good. The mountains were farther away than she initially thought, and the path that led to them was on a steep incline. Plus, the mage’s dress was far too long on her, and she had to hike it up as she ran. 

She made it up to the top of the path, which gave way to crags and steep cuts of stone. 

“What’s the plan after this?”

Annette started, jerking to the side, and on the top of one of these steep cuts of stone leading to the side of a shear mountain was Felix. 

How he managed to get there so quickly was beyond Annette. Again, not very good at running. 

She threw a Cutting Gale at him, and he didn’t even dodge, only held up his glowing shield as it absorbed most of her magic. Damn Relic. 

He jumped down, and she backed up. He did have at least two swords on that sword belt of his. “Run into a cave? It’s pitch black. Fight your way through? Then what? The nearest village isn’t for hours. Do you even know where you are?”

“I’m in Faerghus,” she snapped, and she loosed Saggitae at him. 

He was quick, and he rolled to the side and leaped up, within a sword’s length away from her once again. Annette backed up quickly, and she lost her footing as she bumped into a rocky structure that bordered the path. Trapped. 

She fired Excalibur at him, but once again his shield took most of the damage. He  _ did _ grunt as he withstood it, and a fine cut had appeared from his cheek up into his hairline. 

His sword was drawn more quickly than she could react, and Annette pressed herself into the rock at her back. With his sword at her chin, she had to look up at him. 

“You’re trouble, Annette Dominic,” he said.

“Why, we’ve only just met,” she answered levelly.

Felix pressed his sword forward, and Annette flinched but it scraped against the rock to the side of her face. 

“And yet I already feel it’s been entirely too long.”

This was how Annette found herself in the cart, a chain binding her wrists together, Felix Fraldarius holding the loose end in a black gloved hand. 

“We are the Wolf Guard,” Felix said, looking analytically over at her with sharp eyes. 

Annette blinked at him vacantly. “The  _ what? _ I’ve never heard of that.”

He pulled against the chain as the cart jostled and Annette was jerked forward. Her back ached from where the wolf’s claws sank into her flesh. She bet she had a nasty scar, in spite of the healers Felix no doubt used to heal the injuries. “You’re not  _ meant _ to,” he said, his tone clearly vexed. 

She was beginning to fear she’d been captured by a cult. The indigo design emblazoned on the back of the furred jackets was the Crest of Blaiddyd, and the familiar sight was the only thing keeping her from panicking. 

“There’s been a problem with the wolves since the time that Saint Seiros walked the Earth,” Felix intoned in a bored voice that indicated he’d told this story over and over again. 

“Saint Seiros?” Annette asked, unsure. 

His amber eyes seemed dusty in the dim lighting. “You’re familiar with the Four Saints, I assume?”

“Of course,” she said, offended. She wasn’t an absolute idiot. 

“And with Maurice?”

Annette nodded, more slowly. It seemed that this was actually going somewhere. 

“It seems that Maurice was able to control Giant Wolves. And it seems that Giant Wolves under his thrall, through fighting with other Giant Wolves, were able to recruit more Wolves into the pack. The attacks of these wolves have an interesting effect on humans.”

"When attacked by a wolf influenced by the Crest of the Beast, it's said to cause humans to transform into a wolf themselves under the light of a full moon. Crazed, bloodthirsty, and answering the Beast himself. You found yourself on the wrong end of a rogue pack of these Wolves."

Annette scoffed at him. "The Crest of the Beast died out long ago. Stories like that are nothing but fairytales."

Felix frowned tightly at her. "This is not a matter to take lightly, Miss Dominic. It's true that children across Fodlan are told these stories as cautionary tales, but I assure you, the stories are based on fact. I've been hand-picked by his Highness to monitor these wolves and kill as many as possible. Any human who may have a latent form of the condition is brought back to Castle Fraldarius, to be monitored for the next Change and then slaughtered if the condition presents itself. If not, they may go free, no harm done."

"A latent form?" Annette echoed, confused.

"Each attack a human being suffers from an afflicted wolf may pass on the disease. It's not a given--there's many accounts of people getting scratches or bites and continuing on to kill more of the vile beasts unaffected. We won't know if a person is affected or not until they transform under the light of a full moon."

"This is  _ lunacy,"  _ Annette protested, and she lifted her hands to her face to try to figure out how to slip free of the chain.

Felix tugged on it, purposefully pulling on her bound wrists until she dropped them, and she winced as the chain dug into bone. She leaned forward to relieve the pressure, holding Felix’s gaze, curious and on edge. “This is real, Miss Dominic. Believe it or don’t; it’s no matter to me. Your circumstances will remain the same.”

"My father will come looking for me," Annette said stubbornly.

Felix scoffed at her. "The Baron will be informed, and any issue with the arrangement can be taken up with His Highness."

Annette was not the only prisoner with the party this morning, she learned. She was, however, the only one who was also a member of the nobility. She also learned that she was the only woman, and as such she was allowed to remain in the supply cart on her own while a guard monitored her.

"Ladies don't usually do much wolf fighting," the guard explained to her.  _ "Especially _ high-class ladies. In the dead of night."

Annette frowned sharply. "The people needed help. As the lords of the land, it's our responsibility--"

"Shame the Baron's getting on in years," the guard interrupted. "Could've saved you a lot of trouble, Miss."

Annette sighed, and demanded, "Where are we headed?"

The guard turned out to be friendly, if somewhat demeaning.

The journey was to a castle, but not the main one in the capital of Fraldarius, Annette learned. They were headed to the south of Fraldarius, just past Galatea near the Conand tower.

Felix was the second son of the Duke Fraldarius, and his brother was involved in many politics between Fhirdiad and Fraldarius. Felix had resigned himself to life as a mercenary when the former leader of the Wolf Guard passed on and a replacement was needed quickly. His Highness and His Majesty were in agreement that the young lord would make an excellent leader for the organization.

Duties mostly included fighting wolves. Sometimes they were required to kill those who shifted between wolf and man, hunting them and killing the same as a mercenary. He and his troops lived on a stipend from Fhirdiad, plus whatever they won off their enemies in fights.

"Not a bad way to make a living!" the guard told her enthusiastically.

Perhaps not, until one was bitten by a wolf.

The castle was small, which Annette liked. It reminded her of Castle Dominic. The guard helped her down from the cart with a hand on her elbow. 

“Home, sweet home,” the guard said, and he let go of Annette’s arm. 

“For you, maybe. Some of us are going to be locked up.” She thrust her arms in front of the guard’s face. 

“Locked up?” he echoed, confused. “What for?”

She blinked at him. “Because of the… wolf stuff?”

“We don’t lock people up for that,” the guard said, a laugh in his voice. “Nothing makes an innocent man turn into a true criminal faster than being locked up like one.” 

“Oh,” Annette said, blinking in confusion at her bound wrists. “But I’m--”

“You did try to run away, Miss. Once we’re in the castle you’ll get your own room. You’ll be allowed to walk around the castle into any place that’s not blocked off. We’ll explain it all later.”

“So when--?” 

“As soon as we get inside,” the guard said, smiling kindly. “We do this kind of thing all the time. Just trust us, Miss.”

“Don’t fill her head with stupid ideas,” a familiar voice said, and Annette was almost glad to be facing Felix once again. 

“I beg your pardon, sir,” the guard humbly. 

“No,  _ I _ beg your pardon. You should’ve been prepared to handle questions, milord,” Annette said, and perhaps she used the honorific a bit sarcastically. 

“Miss Dominic, just as I was beginning to forget you,” Felix said. 

She glared at him. 

“While there are some who are allowed the privilege to roam the halls of the castle, there are others who are considered too risky to be allowed. Into which category do you believe you fall, Miss Annette Fantine?”

“I see what you’re getting at, Lord Fraldarius, and I must correct you,” Annette said sweetly. “If your implication is that I am a flight risk, then I assure you I am no such thing. I have no interest in leaving the safety of the castle walls and becoming a risk to my own people. My earlier escape attempt was based on a sore lack of information.”

“Generally, when a person attacks my troops and makes an escape attempt, I shut them in the dungeons,” Felix said. "You may look innocent, Miss Dominic, but I’ve seen you fight. I think, personally, it would be safer to lock you away in the dungeons.”

He was baiting her, Annette could tell. She was a good eight inches shorter than him, but she met his gaze and intensified the hostility as she looked up at him.

“His Highness has written me, via pegasus courier, and asked me to consider your family’s contributions to the Kingdom. But one more slip up and it’s off to the dungeons with you, I’m afraid.”

He was looking at her smugly, expecting, perhaps, a thank you, or a promise of improved behavior. Annette offered neither of these. “If you had any sense you’d throw me straight into the dungeons now,” Annette said hotly. 

Felix stepped closer to her, and Annette realized how tall he was. His jacket was bigger than Annette was, herself, hanging from his shoulders to the tops of his boots. “Is that a threat?”

“Of course not,” Annette said, and she brushed her hair behind her ear as casually as she could with restrained wrists. “But a good leader takes stock of only what is in front of him, not the preconceived notions of a man who is not even present.”

He looked down at her, frowning, and to many of the guardsmen who were waiting for his next command he said, “Please assure that there is at least one cell in the dungeons available at all times for Miss Annette Fantine Dominic.”

○○○○○○

**Red Wolf Moon - Waning Gibbous Moon**

The first few days at the castle in Fraldarius lands was slow, and Annette passed the days the best way she knew how--researching, reading, and studying. She was reading up on the legend of Maurice and the Crest of the Beast, pulling scholarly anthologies and children’s stories alike. 

She was wandering the halls after dinner one night--a bizarre affair where she and other could-be Wolves were treated to a three-course meal, prepared by the Castle chef and probably shared with the many troops. Annette wondered where Felix took his meals, if not in the dining room like a dignified noble. He was a strange man. She really tried not to think about him most of the time. And when she did think of him, it was only to ruminate about how vexing he was. 

Anyway, she was wandering the halls looking for the library. It wasn’t that large, smaller than Dominic’s library, even, but filled with very different materials. 

She had taken to camping out there, only allowing herself to be called away for meals, returning to her room late and coming back to her studying early in the morning.

Once she remembered which hallway to turn down off the main one, it was a simple enough task to throw herself back into studious reading, as she’d left her table organized so she would know exactly where she left off when she came back.

She didn’t hear the light footsteps of a particular swordsman when he entered, and she barely even dignified his presence with a look up to him as he pulled out a chair to join her.

“It’s been brought to my attention that you won’t leave the library,” Felix said as he sat in the chair across from Annette. He rested his cheek on his hand, the way he might’ve if they were classmates and she dragged him here to study. 

“Mm? I wouldn’t say  _ won’t. _ I just haven’t,” she said, and she flipped the page in the Wolf Guard History book she’d been reading. She just got through a very boring part about how the institution was associated with Church, and then became secular, and then became full of extremists who went against the Church who were all killed and the Church filled it with their own army for a few decades until King Loog took control of it under doctrine of the Archbishop at the time. Funny how some texts could make the murder of Wolf Hunters seem boring. 

Felix let her read, and he began wordlessly looking through Annette’s many piles of books on the table around her. Some she’d read, some she'd skimmed, some were sorted by date of publication, some were compilations of fictional stories, some contained first-person accounts of Beast Crest Wolves. 

“It is normal to feel the need to gather information,” Felix said quietly, after he’d flipped open a modern text referencing the Guard leader before him. “I must say, however, I feel your endeavors have been excessive.”

She scowled at him, and he only looked at her calmly. She hated that. 

“I don’t think you can have a lot of empathy for people in my position,” she said tightly, then returned to the passage she was reading. 

“Why’s that?” Felix asked. 

Annette made him wait for her to come to the end of her passage before answering. “Because,” she said finally. “I  _ know  _ what you do. What all of your soldiers do.”

“Enlighten me,” he said, leaning his chin on his palm again. 

“You march us out to the woods and wait to see if we’ll Change or not. And then if we do, you murder us, and if we don’t you release us back into society with a gag order.”

“How would you run things if you had your way, Miss Dominic?”

_ “I don’t know,” _ she said, annoyed. “I think I’d try less killing people, for starters.”

“Ah, right. We didn’t think of that. What would you do with those who Change, then? Lock them up?”

“They’re only dangerous during the full moon,” she said with a roll of her eyes. “So why not gather them up during the full moon and--”

Felix interrupted her by making a big show of trailing his finger down a number of spines of piled books, and Annette watched silently. He pulled out a particular one and flipped open to a particular page. “This was done very early on. The Changers formed a pack and killed hundreds of people over several days and several members of the Guard before they were finally reined in.”

Annette glanced down at the page before looking back to Felix.

“Any other suggestions?” 

“Magic. It’s believed that aconite--”

Felix scoffed at her and before she could even finish and he piled volume after volume onto the space between them from many of Annette’s neat formerly neat piles. “Aconite doesn’t work. Magic has worked, but staving off a transformation has led to several side effects of the Crest, including the subject’s hair losing its color and a painful death.”

“You’ve studied all of this?” Annette demanded, sweeping her arm over the whole table to indicate all of the books. She couldn’t imagine Felix sitting at a table poring over a book the way she had been. 

“That’s my job,” he said. “I’m beginning to think you don’t have a very high opinion of me, Miss Dominic.”

She huffed at him, not deigning to answer, and she adjusted her skirts in her chair. It  _ had  _ been a while since she last took a break. 

“Well, what’s better than a second pair of eyes, right?” She stretched her arms toward the ceiling and tilted her head at him. “Am I not allowed to read?”

“Not anymore,” Felix said, and he flipped the book closed. 

Her spot was lost, and she frantically flipped the book open again, trying to remember what page she’d left off on-- “That was rude!” Annette shouted.

“Three days you’ve been in here. You’ll drive yourself mad long before you’re in danger of Changing.”

She ought to blast a wind spell at him. Now that he didn’t have his stupid shield, or a stupid sword, or his stupid  _ jacket. _

Annette swept her eyes over the piles of books wordlessly. 

“I will  _ carry  _ you out,” he threatened. 

“You’re just a big bully commanding an army,” Annette said, and she kicked over her chair in a fit of anger. 

Somehow Felix was on his feet, righting it before it even hit the ground. 

“You’re in a difficult situation,” Felix said, his voice was soft but with a sharp edge to it, shells beneath soft sand at the beaches in Dominic. “I’m trying to be understanding but don’t get it wrong--you  _ are  _ a prisoner and you  _ may not _ get out of this alive. Don’t put me in a position where I need to treat you as such.”

Her wind spell idea seemed really appealing right now. Instead, she reached up and shoved him across the chest as hard as she could. For her efforts, he only rocked back on his heels, but he grabbed her arm in a tight grip. 

She winced, but the pain wasn’t in her forearm, where his fingers were, but rather in her shoulder, where thick, silvery, raised scars decorated the healing skin at the site of the Giant Wolf's bite. The skin pulled painfully, and the newly-healed area was still tender. 

Felix flicked his eyes to her shoulder silently and he released her. She curled her arm to her chest, looking up at him with wide eyes. 

“We’ve a salve in the infirmary for that,” he said, and he pushed the chair against the table roughly. “I suggest that you go get some. 

○○○○○

**Red Wolf Moon - Waning Quarter Moon**

After Annette’s banishment from the library from none other than the master of the house himself, she concentrated on two things--keeping occupied and staying away from Felix Fraldarius. 

She was allowed to use the training grounds, as long as she never raised a weapon or her magic against another person. There were plenty of targets set up around the grounds, so this wasn’t much of a problem. 

Sometimes she’d hear something--footsteps, or the quiet thunk of steel on canvas, and she would turn around and no one would be there.

There were times when she would come to the training grounds and work herself until all her energy was spent, just so she could fall into bed and sleep until the next morning to eat up another day. Being exhausted was good.

On one occasion, on the night of the waning quarter moon (yes, Annette had acquired a calendar of the moon’s phases and she was becoming quite obsessed with it), she worked herself so hard that she passed out. It was only for a moment, and she was sitting on the ground anyway as a dizzy spell gripped her. She kept her head tucked into her knees, waiting for the dizziness and the ringing in her ears to subside. When it finally did, she forced herself to stand slowly. She slowly made her way back to her room, fighting off the chill of the Red Wolf Moon after sunset, and she felt something warm and furry brush against her legs. 

The most picturesque white fluffy cat Annette had ever seen was purring and brushed on Annette’s legs, and she stopped to scratch it. 

Evidently, this was not what the cat wanted, as it swiped at her hand with blunted claws. 

“Ohhh, you want to play?” Annette asked, and she untied her hair ribbon and as her hair spilled over her shoulders, she wiggled it in front of the cat. 

It swiped at it and Annette giggled even as a gentle breeze pricked up goosebumps on her arms under her sweater.

She was going to die in a few weeks anyway--a few minutes in the cold wouldn’t harm her in the slightest. 

_ “Here kitty, kitty, aren’t you pretty, how fun it is to jump and play!”  _ Annette sang in a silly tune as the cat snapped its tiny jaw at the ribbon, which Annette jerked deftly out of the way.  _ “Here kitty, kitty--”  _ she continued, but she heard the scuffing of a boot on pavement and she snapped her head to the side to see who was spying on her.

“Oh. Excuse me, sir,” Annette said, and she nodded her head at him once. "I hope I’m not in your way.”

“No, nothing like that,” Felix said, and he was looking down at her strangely, like he didn’t recognize her.

The cat swiped its paw at her and, as Annette was distracted, it sunk its claws into her hand.

“Ouch!” Annette hissed, and she dropped the ribbon, which the cat dragged a few feet away before tangling itself up in it.

“That cat’s a monstrosity,” Felix grumbled, and Annette giggled at him. He raised his eyebrows as she looked between him and the cat. 

“If you say so, sir.”

“You like to sing, Miss Dominic?”

“Oh, Saints. You heard that?” Annette asked, and she was blushing. “It’s just a silly habit I picked up from my mother, that’s all.

Felix stooped and freed her ribbon from the cat’s paws before shooing it away. “Is it? I thought you carried a tune quite well.”

“Wh-what?” she demanded. “Are you serious? It was only a silly little song.”

He shrugged, and she wondered whether the pink color on his cheeks was from the cold or her overreaction to what he probably meant as a simple compliment. “I was serious, actually. It doesn’t take an opera to know whether someone has a nice voice.”

She bit her lip when she realized that her mouth was hanging open. “Um, thanks?”

Felix moved past her to a small wooden door that acted as a side entrance to the main hall of the castle. He held it open for her. “Come on, it’s freezing,” he said without looking at her.

She had no choice but to enter the castle alongside him. 

“There’s a chapel near the dining room,” Felix said quietly. 

“A chapel?” she repeated.

“Yeah. It’s for anyone to use. They hold masses there in the mornings. Before breakfast. In case you wanted a place to go to sing.” 

“Oh! Um, well… Thank you for… telling me?”

“I go there in the mornings, if I can. Maybe I’ll see you there.” He was still not quite looking at her.

Her stomach lurched in a way that actually wasn’t that unpleasant. She hoped she wasn’t about to pass out again.

“Sure, I don’t see why not,” she said, and she smiled at him softly.

He didn’t return her smile, but he looked at her for longer than usual. The light of a candle set into a sconce deeper in the hallway reflected in them, and she had to drop her eyes to the floor as she wondered what had gotten  _ into  _ her. 

“I’ll see you there, Annette,” he said for some reason the fact that he’d used only her first name made her heart skip a beat.

○○○○

**Ethereal Moon - New Moon**

Adding mornings at the chapel to her schedule seemed to provide a significant boost to her mood. It was nice to feel close to the Goddess at this time, and when she looked out of her window and saw a moonless sky it comforted her.

Her days were busy now, with Felix allowing her back into the library (“In moderation,” he’d told her with a grunt when she asked him about it when he was leaving the chapel one morning) and the training grounds and her new hobby of helping the staff cook dinner. 

They discovered quickly that Annette was all thumbs in the kitchen, but they still let her stir onions as they fried in oil or mash potatoes or other relatively harmless tasks. She’d burnt the onions once, but she ate all of the burned ones herself, so it wasn’t a big deal in the end. 

When she begged the head cook, a tiny, wonderfully grumpy older woman named Marta who had the thick accent of someone from Northern Faerghus, to let her  _ bake, _ she almost considered going over her head directly to Felix--who’d taken to sitting next to her at the chapel and practicing some lightning spells while she went for her daily training exercises--but in the end she relented. 

Annette baked her mother’s apple turnovers from memory, with a few helpful hints from Marta. She cried when she bit it into it, and she hadn’t even realized she’d been homesick until then. 

And so it was that she was in the kitchens at 11:30 at night, carefully cutting gingerbread cookie dough into the shape of little gingerbread men and women. 

Now that it was Ethereal Moon, and the cloudy mornings brought flurries instead of light drizzles,  _ someone  _ should really make them. And Felix didn’t seem to care about tradition.

“Annette?”

She was so distracted by making her gingerbread people that she didn’t hear Felix approach. He wasn’t wearing his usual furred jacket and heavy boots, but he was dressed for sleep instead. His nightshirt was loose around his neck, and Annette quickly averted her eyes. 

“Good evening, sir,” she said, and she made herself focus on her cookies. 

“Baking  _ again?” _ Felix asked, and he approached the counter, where some cookies were cooling from the oven. 

“Well, honestly, I could die in two weeks.” She glanced up at him to gauge his reaction, and he was leaning over the counter, looking tense, but he said nothing in return. “I want to eat as  _ many _ sweets as possible between now and then.”

“I’ll make sure we have enough supplies, then.”

For some reason, this made Annette’s heart kick. 

“Can I… try one?” 

She grinned at him. “I was told you don’t like sweets, sir,” she said, teasing.

He frowned at her. “I don’t. But they smell good. And you can call me Felix. You’re a noble too, after all.”

She ignored the heat that collected at her neck and her cheeks. It was just the heat of the ovens. 

“I made a batch with extra ginger. Marta told me you liked ginger.”

“I do,” he affirmed in a soft voice. 

“Okay,  _ don’t _ laugh at me. I put a lot of work into this.” She lifted a cookie from among a tray of its companion. “I made a cookie Felix.”

He glanced at her, unsure. “A… what?”

“Look, he has a sword. And he’s frowning.” 

“I’m supposed to eat myself as a cookie?”

“You never baked gingerbread cookies with your mom as a kid?” Annette asked, distressed. “It’s  _ fun.” _

“Nope,” Felix said without offering any more specific information, and he eyed the cookie as though it might attack him with its gingerbread sword before taking a bite of it, head first.

Annette almost giggled at the image, but she knew that Felix was barely humoring her as it was. 

“It’s good,” he said simply, and Annette figured that was about as much praise as she was going to get from Felix Fraldarius. “Did you make any cookie Annettes?”

Delighted that he asked, Annette turned to the counter. And brought the tray over to him. “I did, actually. And here’s cookie Marta. See her hat?”

“What are the circles?” Felix asked as he took another bite of cookie-Felix.

A frown pulled at her mouth, but when she answered she tried to keep her tone as light and airy as the rest of their conversation. “They’re cookie moons.”

He didn’t ask a follow-up question, but he furrowed his brow at her. 

“I don’t know, I thought that if I could make a cookie moon it might feel cathartic to, like…” She placed it over the counter and then she snapped it in half. Then she took that and snapped it in half, and snapped  _ that piece _ in half, until she was left with crumbs too tiny to split any more. 

She glanced over to Felix, who was watching her as he ate his cookie calmly.

“Fuck the moon,” she said, and her voice was soft, and suddenly she was filled with a tight anger that coiled in her chest, around her heart, around her lungs. 

Felix reached over her and took the other half that she hadn’t demolished and he bit it in half as she watched. “Fuck the moon,” he agreed. 

Annette wasn’t expecting him to do that, and suddenly she was so full of appreciation for him, and the way his expression never seemed to change, and the way he let her throw tantrum after tantrum since she got here, and the way he ate her cookies at midnight even though he probably didn’t like them. 

If he was Mercie, she would’ve thrown her arms around him and cried into his shoulder or something. But he wasn’t Mercie, he was Felix, and she hardly knew him and he was her only friend, aside from Marta the grumpy cook. 

She felt bad for herself suddenly, and she wanted to cry, but instead she smiled at Felix and put one of the ruined pieces of the gingerbread moon in her mouth. 

“Annette, you have cookies in the oven now?”

She nodded as she chewed. 

“I think they’re burning.”

Felix rolled his eyes as she fretted over a tray of burnt cookies and dumped them into the garbage before putting a cookie-Annette in her hand and pushing her toward her room. 

○○○

**Ethereal Moon - Waxing Quarter Moon**

It was past midnight on a weekend when Annette caught Felix and his troops returning from some expedition. 

She tried to stay in the background, hiding out amongst the bustle of servants greeting the men, some bringing their horses to the stables and others helping soldiers out of armor. 

It was a sickly orange glow in the shape of a shield that most interested Annette, and she followed it away from the rest of the troops, down a hall and around a corner. In the glow of the shield she could just make out Felix, hunched over, his arm pressed over his abdomen. She listened outside the door through which he'd disappeared, but when she heard the shattering of several pieces of glass, she pushed it open. 

Felix was on the floor, in a heap, trying to bite the cap off of a glass vial, instead of uncorking it with both hands. There was glass on the floor around him, and the smell of a vulnerary stung at Annette's nose.

She approached him quickly, and he grunted in surprise as she approached him. 

She lit a sigil above her palm, throwing white light over him. The first thing she took in was the way the light shone over his abdomen. It was wet with blood. 

“Why didn’t you get this healed?” Annette asked without stopping for a greeting as she kneeled in front of him, her eyebrows drawn together. The wound was deep. The layers of the wound went down to the fascia. 

“The healers were busy with civilians,” Felix said, and he pushed her by the shoulder and made to tug his ruined shirt down over the wound. 

“Stop,” Annette said, her voice soft but authoritative. She swatted his hand away from his shirt and studied the wound again. “I can heal it,” she said, and a sigil glowed beneath her.

“Wait,” Felix said, and his voice sounded a little panicky.

“Sh,” she commanded, and she laid her palm against his bare skin, and magic swirled between them, warm and full of energy. Felix was looking up at her, his eyes golden in the light of her magic. She could feel the magic knitting his wound back together, soothing the pain even as it rose from her manipulation of the area. 

The magic evened out, stopped flowing into Felix’s body, and she was satisfied that she’d done as much as she could. She took her hand away and his skin was smooth beneath her palm. 

“Ha!” Annette said triumphantly. She looked up to Felix and grinned. “Told you I could do it.”

“You’re… are you done?” he asked, and something about his voice made her pause. It was deep and sleepy, like she’d woken him up from a dream. 

“Yeah, like… the wound is healed. See?” Annette dropped her eyes to his healed skin and traced the line of new, red skin that appeared thanks to her magic. Felix hissed, and Annette paused. The new skin would be very sensitive, she should’ve known. “Sorry. Does it hurt? I can--”

Felix grabbed her wrist as another sigil lit up beneath her. “Stop,” he said, his voice strangled. “Please.”

Annette tilted her head at him and her hair spilled over her shoulder. His tone was desperate, and his fingers were tight around her wrist. “I didn’t mean to overstep,” she said demurely. “It’s just so nice to use white magic again.”

“I didn't know you were skilled with Reason and Faith magic. It's… impressive.”

Annette smiled, and as she did she realized Felix’s fingers were still wrapped around her wrist. His grip was gentle, his thumb at the soft inside of her wrist, just above her thumb where her pulse throbbed with an increasing pace. 

He smiled softly, so slight that she almost missed it, and her pulse fluttered and she hoped he couldn’t feel it beneath his fingers. 

“High praise from the Kingdom’s resident wolf-slayer,” Annette said, and she couldn’t help the coquettish giggle that crept into her voice. She was just aware enough of her behavior that blush seeped onto her cheeks.

“You’re a skilled mage,” Felix said, his amber eyes somehow less sharp than usual. They were turned on her with such intensity. How was always looking at  _ everything _ like he was breaking it down to its smallest part?

She adjusted her legs beneath her so she could sit more comfortably. As she adjusted herself, Felix’s fingers slipped from her wrist to her palm.

“I studied at the School of Sorcery. I was the top of my class,” she added offhandedly. Not that Felix was the sort to particularly care about that, but Annette was proud. If she was to transform into a mindless wolf at the height of the full moon then she wanted him to know how capable she was. 

His fingers curled in her palm and goosebumps traveled up Annette’s arm and down her spine. 

“Baking, singing, healing,” Felix said in a soft voice. “What can’t you do, Annette Dominic?”

She frowned. “Are you making  _ fun _ of me?” 

He tilted his head at her. “What about that could  _ possibly--” _

“I’ll have you know that I  _ am  _ a skilled mage. Each one of my professors from the school of sorcery called me an  _ overachiever.  _

“You’re really getting worked up over nothing. My compliments are  _ sincere, _ Miss-- Annette.”

Annette pulled her hand away from him. “This whole time I wanted to believe that you were a nice person underneath everything. I thought that this cold exterior was a show of force, or something, but it isn’t. And it was stupid of me to think that I could connect with someone like you.”

She pushed him by his shoulders and moved away from him, but he caught her by the arm and pulled her into him roughly. She fell almost into his lap, and she was blushing, equal parts flustered and angry.

“It’s not a show of force,” he said calmly, and for some reason his calmness in the face of her outburst only made her blush harder. “The cold exterior has been forged through years of battle, from childhood to now. It’s who I’ve become.”

“That’s not  _ true,”  _ Annette insisted, and she tried to pull her arm away but Felix only held her more firmly, his fingers wrapped just beneath her elbow. “I think it’s a--a defense mechanism.” 

Felix raised his eyebrows at her, but he didn’t contradict her. 

“You  _ think _ it’s who you’ve become, but it isn’t. I hardly know you, and I’ve seen a genuine, warm side of you that you continually  _ reject.” _

Annette really--should should move out of his  _ lap, _ just scoot a little farther away, if not leave entirely. But his fingers were so firm around her arm, and the way his mouth quirked up on one side was making her heart flutter uselessly in her chest. 

“I think the side of me that you’ve seen has been sleeping for a long time,” he said, and his voice was rough, like her skin against stones on a dirt road, or the burnt part of her favorite recipe. “And I think it’s only emerged again as of late.”

Annette’s whole chest was affected by the stupid, useless fluttering of her heart now, and her lungs were tight, filling shallowly with air, and her breath shook as it left her. “Why do you think that is, sir?” she asked, and she really meant for the use of the title to be sarcastic, but it came out eager and thin, and her blush intensified.

“Why, indeed,” he said, and he pulled her even closer, and Annette’s heart swelled against her ribs and its beats were as loud as they were weak. He raised his fingers to her cheek and his eyes became even narrower as he made her tilt her head toward him. Annette couldn’t breathe. She rested her hands on his shoulders, and suddenly her eyelashes were heavy, and she could only meet his eyes through them, and her mouth was dry and wet at the same time. 

She leaned toward him without realizing she was doing it, and impulsively she swept her knuckles along the navy hair that fell over his forehead. His mouth parted as the backs of her fingers grazed his skin, and Annette blinked many times but she couldn’t make herself focus on anything else.

His breath was hot on her neck and her jaw, and she tightened her grip on his arms, trying to keep her balance as everything spun around her. 

“Sir,” a voice said, and Annette couldn’t identify whether it was male or female, young or old, familiar or foreign.

Felix was pushing her to the side as the door banged against the wall of his study, and Annette almost leaped under the cover of his desk. 

A Holy Knight was standing in the doorway, his armor blending with the robes of the clergy he wore beneath. “I came as soon as I was ordered, sir, to heal your wound--”

“Already taken care of,” Felix said tersely, and somehow he was already on his feet. “Go.”

The knight bowed low and left the room as ordered.

Annette couldn’t image how Felix sprang to his feet so fast--her own legs were shaky and numb. 

He held a hand out to her and after looking up at him distrustfully she took it. He yanked her up by her hand and his eyes were sharp as ever as he looked down at her. “You should go,” he said, and something about his tone was dangerous.

As if she’d down something wrong!

She frowned at him. “I think I will,” she shot back. He didn’t answer her as she passed through the threshold. 

“And  _ you’re welcome,” _ she said scathingly, and to punctuate her statement she lit a sigil over her palm and then crushed it in her fingers. 

Felix didn’t answer her, but he did narrow his eyes and she counted that as a victory.

For the next week, he would politely knock on her door or come to her where she studied in the library when he acquired a wound that needed healing.

○○

**Ethereal Moon - Waxing Gibbous Moon**

It was one day until the full moon. 

Annette didn’t go to the chapel, or to the training grounds, or to the kitchens. Or to any meals that day.

She didn’t want to leave her room, but when she did it wasn’t until after sunset, full of a sense of urgency as the nearly-full moon rose on the horizon. 

She wasn’t really aware of where she was going, but it made sense that she would end up in the library.

The reference books she was making her way through were all shelved neatly--she’d given up making piles and instead she contrived a cataloguing system so she could shelve the books without forgetting which ones she’d already read.

She didn’t go to a table, though. Instead, she sat with her back against one of the shelves, staring out a floor-to-ceiling window as harsh moonlight shone on her. Eventually, she went from sitting against the bookshelf to laying on the ground in front of it, a pathetic, crying mess. 

She was angry at the Goddess, angry at Felix, angry at her father, angry at herself. She was scared. So scared that she considered finding a dagger somewhere and driving it through her own heart just to spare herself the pain of what might happen in twenty-four short hours. 

She thought she stopped crying when heavy boots, muffled by plush carpet, made her look up.

"Will it hurt?" Annette whispered without explaining. Tears swam in her vision, and when she shifted her gaze to look at Felix, they spilled down her cheeks.

"Will what hurt?" he asked, and sat beside her, his sheathed swords clunking together as he adjusted them more comfortably.

"Changing."

Felix's eyes were sharp and hard, but they were also sort of sad. "Firsthand accounts from those who have Changed report it as being incredibly painful."

Annette had read the same thing. "Promise me you'll be the one to do it."

His eyes were distant, and he looked out the broad, tall window to the rolling plains in the distance. "Do what?"

"As I'm Changing. Your silver sword aimed at my heart. That won't hurt, right?"

Felix was quiet, but he leaned back on his elbows so that he was laying next to her. "I wouldn't know."

Annette turned on her side so she was facing him. They lay in the light of the nearly-full moon, and it was so unfair that Felix looked so mesmerizing in it. His navy hair was shiny in places in a way that made Annette want to touch it. The harsh light cut attractive shadows in the right places of his face, at his cheeks and his chin and his forehead. His black Wolf Guard jacket was splayed open, and Annette dropped her gaze to where his turtleneck sweater was tucked into his pants, the way it lay flat over his abdomen and what it might look like beneath. If only she weren't headed to the proverbial gallows tomorrow.

"I wish I was at home," Annette whispered, and she buried her face into her hands. "I wish none of this ever happened. I wish I could just  _ know--" _

She cut herself off quickly as Felix pulled her into him wordlessly. He was staring up at the ceiling expressionlessly and he carded his fingers through her hair, trailing his nails over her scalp before dropping them through the ends.

He was breathing slowly and steadily, his chest rising and falling under Annette's cheek. "I'm sorry," he said gruffly. "I wish it didn't have to be this way."

She adjusted against him, settling comfortably into his chest, listening to his heart beat, slow and loud. She wondered how many more times her own heart would pump before he drove his sword through it. 

"Is it ever hard," she whispered, and she knew her breath was tickling the skin of his face because he fluttered his eyes closed as she spoke, "killing us as we Change?"

Without opening his eyes, he gently pulled his fingers through a knot in her hair. "Hasn't been, until now."

New tears pricked at her eyes, but she closed them and concentrated on the sound of air filling Felix's lungs and the soothing motion of his fingers in her hair.

She didn't remember falling asleep on the library floor as the moon shone down on them, but she was distantly aware that Felix had picked her up in his arms, and still half-asleep, Annette wound her arms around his neck, touching the tips of her fingers to the fine baby hairs there. 

He placed her on her bed and leaned over her to untangle her arms from his neck, and she dropped her fingers to his cheek. She could feel the rough hints of stubble, and she followed the line to his chin and below, running her fingers gently over his throat where the collar of his turtleneck rested.

She wanted to kiss him so badly. Just once.

But she was so sleepy, and he was gone, and she was on her bed in the dark alone except for the company of the not-quite-full moon, mocking her with its sliver of emptiness. She rolled over onto her stomach, tangling her skirts around her legs, and slept with her face pressed into her pillow.

○

**Ethereal Moon - Full Moon**

Sundown was approaching, and Annette didn’t have the heart to waste wood on a new fire. She sat on the edge of her bed, her furred capelet wrapped around her shoulders, and she waited.

She focused on the way her hair felt against her cheek, the way the fur of her capelet felt soft against her neck, the way the plush bedding felt under her fingers. She stared listlessly at the door, feeling terrifyingly out-of-body, as though she were watching her life tick out from above like the Goddess.

After some time--Annette had no inkling of exactly how long--Felix appeared at her door, dressed for battle.

"Annette," he said, his voice tight. "It's time."

She nodded. She knew it was time. The light in her room turned from the cold but bright light of the late afternoon to the pink and orange crepuscular light of dusk. She stood and smoothed down her skirt over her thighs. 

Felix was holding a chain in his hands, silver and thin. She held out her wrists for him.

“Annette,” he said, and he hesitated. 

“It’s okay,” she said, and she smiled at him. For some reason, it was easy for her to push aside her fear for his benefit. “Just do it.”

Jaw clenched, he wrapped the chain around her wrists, leaving almost two meters of chain trailing behind.

He took her arm by the inside of the elbow and pushed her into the hallway in front of him. With his hand firm on her arm, he led her through the halls of the castle, out of the back entrance, and into the woods that bordered the castle. He paused only to take and light a torch.

He led her through the forest, over the light dusting of snow that covered dead leaves. He held her firmly by the arm as she scrambled over a rotted log. He held the torch above her so that she could see where she was walking. They arrived at a clearing, and Felix gestured to it to indicate their stopping point and dropped the chain.

With the toe of his booted foot, he kicked away the dusty snow from the ground. Annette could see a curved piece of metal jutting out from the forest floor. 

Felix tested it by pressing his foot into it, and then, satisfied, he turned his amber eyes to her. 

Wordlessly, he held out his gloved hand to her. Annette hesitated, and she remembered the day Felix looked when she first met him, silver sword dripping with wolf’s blood, all sharp angles and cutting remarks, and she wondered how far she’d get if she made a break for it. 

Her breaths were coming in shallow and quick, and Felix’s hand wavered. “There’s nowhere to go, Annette,” he said, and he said it like an apology.

Numbly, she walked over to him, and the chain dragged behind her as she walked. Felix picked it up and threaded it through the piece of metal. The chain dug into her wrists as he pulled it taut, and he adjusted it to give her enough slack to stand. He fastened it in place and then stood over her, looking between her wrists and the stake that held the chain in place. 

“You alright?” he asked.

Annette gaped up at him. “How could I  _ possibly--” _

“I meant with the slack,” he interrupted quickly. 

“Oh.” Annette moved her bound wrists the few small inches the chain allowed. “It’s fine I guess? Like, how much am I supposed to be allowed to move?”

Felix frowned. “The chain’s really only there in case you Change.”

“Right.” Annette turned her face to the sky. The sun was mostly gone now. The last of the fiery tones of sunset were fading from the as inky darkness crawled downward, bringing with it a smattering of stars. No moon yet. 

She shivered as the wind disturbed her hair around her shoulders and picked up the hem of her dress. “Any idea when moonrise is tonight?”

Felix frowned. “Yeah.” He took off his furred jacket, and Annette watched curiously. “It’s supposed to snow tonight,” he said, and he slung it over her shoulders. It was big on her, and the hem reached almost as long as her skirt. “You should’ve worn a heavier jacket.”

“Aren’t you cold?”

“I’m fine.”

She did feel warmer in Felix’s jacket, and it was an incredibly nice gesture. She’d try to remember it when Felix stabbed his sword through her heart. 

He ran his fingers along the hilts of the swords in his belt, and a combination of leaves and snow crunched under his boots as he walked away from her. He settled for leaning his back against the bark of a tree about five meters away from her, and he crossed his arms over his chest and looked over at her.

Annette held her breath without realizing she was doing it. Several tense moments passed. 

“What’s--what’s next?” she asked.

Felix furrowed his brow at her. “We wait.”

Great. Annette considered slipping into another panic attack--now certainly seemed as appropriate a time as any--but Felix’s gaze, calm but serious, grounded her. 

She didn't want to sit on the ground, not when it was covered in snow, so she bent her head and pulled her hands as high as she could without causing the chain to pull and she prayed.

She asked the Goddess to protect her parents, and her uncle and his family, and the King and the Prince and even Felix. She asked her to help him atone for killing her, if that was something he was going to have to do. 

Her prayers give way to gospel hymns, the subject being the Goddess and her daughter Seiros and even the Four Saints. Felix only watched her, his arms crossed over his chest, his sharp eyes impassive. 

Annette's legs ached after standing for so long, but she still didn't want to sit on the ground. It felt like giving up.

Snow drifted down between the spaces between leaves, falling mostly on Annette as Felix was shielded by the canopy of leaves. Thin flakes turned silvery in the starlight and landed in her hair, on the exposed skin of her face, over Felix's jacket. 

She was getting tired. She didn't ask Felix again what time the moon was supposed to appear in the sky. She decided it would be better if she didn't know the exact time she would die.

Felix didn’t move from his post, either, steadfastly leaning against the tree, even as snow began to drift down over the clearing.

Annette wasn’t sure how much longer it was when the moon made its appearance, peeking out over the trees. The sight of it twisted her stomach into tight knots, and she looked over to Felix as her pulse raced, but he didn’t seem to be worried just yet. 

The moon was reflected in the whites of his eyes, and he looked up at it, over her head. When he looked down to her, his expression was grim. “The changing usually starts when it’s at its highest for new Wolves.”

“How long does that take?” she asked, her mouth dry.

He frowned at her sharply. “Not long.”

She was shaking, the chain making delicate tinkling noises of metal on metal. 

She wished he would say something, or maybe  _ she _ should say something. She thought of the letters she’d written to her parents, to Mercie, to her uncle. She never wrote one to Felix.

In the distance, Annette could hear the sound of steel ringing, and the loud howling of a Giant Wolf. The chain wrapped around her legs as she tried to discern from which direction the danger was coming. 

The wolf's cries became high pitched and mournful, and eventually faded to repeated, waning cries. 

"What was that?" Annette demanded, and she untangled herself from the chain.

"Other suspected wolves," Felix said. He was watching Annette now, his arms crossed over his chest, his eyes dark in the impossibly bright light of the cruel full moon. "At stations just like these throughout the forest."

Annette tried to turn as a human scream distorted into the high-pitched cry of a wolf, but the chain dug into her wrist and she jerked forward. 

"Felix," she said, desperate, with eyes wet with tears. Her heart was hammering in her chest. "I'm scared."

"It'll be over soon," he said, and with a hand at the hilt of his sword, he slowly approached her. 

She backed away as much as the chain allowed, and she was leaning forward to relieve pressure from her wrists, off balance, and Felix's jacket was slipping from one shoulder.

"Wait, Felix," she stammered, and the chain was cutting into her skin. "Please, just…"

"Sh," he said harshly, and he pulled on the chain until she stumbled forward. 

She was shaking, her eyes on his right hand as it hovered above his sword.

Somewhere in the forest, another fight broke out. It seemed like all around them, wolf cries were echoing and swords were ringing.

Felix's gloved hand reached out for her and Annette flinched, raising her bound hands and cowering instinctively. But his hand was swordless, and he pulled her into him and forced her to look up at him with a hand on her chin.

"Change, dammit," he growled.  _ "Now." _ His eyes seemed browner than usual, the soft yellow tones wiped out by the sickly white light of the moon above them.

She blinked up at him. His navy hair was peppered with snow and his breath appeared before her in thin clouds that were immediately shredded by the wind.

He was breathing hard, his visible breaths coming more and more quickly. "I need to  _ know." _

“I--” she began, and she could see herself reflected in his wide pupils. She didn’t  _ look _ like a wolf--she looked scared, and confused, and impossibly in his jacket.

The forest was returning to its former silence, and Annette was afraid to move. Felix had one hand at her shoulder, the other one holding her face as he looked intently at her eyes. His eyes shifted over her face, searching for something, but Annette wasn't sure what. "Is it… is it over?"

Felix turned his sharp eyes up to the moon, which was beginning its leisurely descent in the night sky, and Annette ducked her head away from his fingers. She put as much space as possible between them, which really was only about a half-step thanks to the chains. 

"I'm still me," she said, and she used her bound hands to gather her skirts and look down at her shoes, just to make sure that nothing about them somehow changed. The chain wrapped around her legs as she looked behind her. No fluffy wolf's tail greeted her. "That's--that's good, right?"

He looked down at her, impassive for several moments. She was starting to wonder if something was wrong. He brushed what Annette assumed would be snow from her hair and pulled his jacket more securely over her shoulders. 

"Yeah," he said, his voice low and soft in a way that made Annette wonder. "Yeah it's… it's good."

He pulled her into him by the furred jacket, and she brought her bound hands to his chest as she stumbled forward, and she fluttered her eyes closed as she realized that his face was awfully close to hers. 

Their lips met, softly at first, but Felix wrapped an arm around her and slid it from her waist to her upper back and he pressed her into him with a fervor she rose to match. She desperately wanted to throw her arms around his neck, but there wasn't enough slack on the chain. She settled for dropping her hands to his abdomen and opening her mouth beneath his. A small, pathetic sound escaped from her throat, and Felix raised a gloved hand to her cheek, adjusting the angle of the kiss and darting his tongue forward to brush against her lower lip. 

A particularly harsh gust of wind swept by them, and she felt Felix shiver against it.

She pushed him back gently, and as she did he only increased the pressure of his lips against hers, unwilling to end the kiss. He pulled the chain so her hands couldn't push him away anymore, and she was off balance but he pressed her into him with his arm around her so that she was leaning on him anyway.

"Felix," she murmured against his lips when he paused for a quick breath. "It's  _ cold." _

He grunted unintelligibly at that, then he grabbed an instrument from the tree where he'd stationed himself and drove it against the chain at the stake. It snapped, and he made quick work of unwinding the rest from around her wrists.

A thin red line circled looped around the backs of them, and Annette winced. Felix plucked the torch from its sconce in the tree. 

"Let's go," he said, his voice impatient, and he took her fingers in his hand and led her from the forest into Castle Fraldarius once more.

**Author's Note:**

> Ending card: Annette feels a responsibility to help the people of Fodlan with her new knowledge. She and Felix find comfort in each other as they fight every day for a safer world. 
> 
> To be honest I could go off and write several tens of thousands words more about this. I love werewolves and drama what can I say.


End file.
